


The Blacksmith's Assassin

by Caenea



Series: The Winterfell Reunions [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arya tells her story, F/M, First Time Sex, Gendry makes his stand, Making Love, Mentions of Murder, Sex, Slow Burn, proposal kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 08:25:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11985999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caenea/pseuds/Caenea
Summary: Gendry goes to Arya’s room ahead of the arrival of the Dragon Queen at Winterfell. He finally hears the truth about Arya and what she's been doing, and falls flat on his face in love with his fiery assassin girl.ORThe Gendrya smut that (every single one of you) nobody asked for.





	The Blacksmith's Assassin

**Author's Note:**

> I am Gendrya trash and I have zero shame about that. 
> 
> Follows the Winterfell Reunions storyline and finally gives you all an actual Gendrya scene. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome and make me feel warm and happy inside.

He knocks three times at the wooden door, the knocks sounding like hammer blows in the quiet upper corridors of Winterfell. If he hadn’t seen Tyrion go down to the Hall again, and if he didn’t know the Hound’s rooms were on the other side of the castle, perhaps he wouldn’t have dared walk these corridors, because maybe Arya would appreciate some secrets.

 

She answers it eventually, leaning herself against the frame. The fancy dagger’s gone, but Needle is still in place. And she isn’t beautiful or sweet or ladylike at all, but she’s graceful elegance and hard steel all rolled into one. She’s not the princess of a young boy’s dream, but she’s the woman of a man’s deepest hope.

                “Can I help you?” she asks, her voice as cool as a mountain stream.

                “Can I come in?” he asks in return, and she smirks. She pushes open the door and slides inside, and he follows her, closing it carefully behind him. She’s unbuckling Needle, placing the sword carefully on the table before she speaks to him. 

                “Heard you caught a Wight. Heard you saved their lives when they were too damn stupid to do it themselves,” she says, sitting down and propping her booted feet on the table.

                “Heard you slit a man’s throat.”

                “I’ve slit a lot of throats.” The unspoken knowledge of the kiss they shared before he went beyond the wall sizzles between them, but he daren’t acknowledge it and she doesn’t mention it. “I did think about slitting yours.”

                “What?”

                “For leaving me. For planning to piss off with the Brotherhood Without Banners. For calling me M’lady. For saying I couldn’t be your family because I was too highborn for it.”

                “But you didn’t.”

                “Well spotted,” she says, dryly. “You saw the blood, in the Hall.” It isn’t a question, but Gendry answers her anyway.

                “I saw it.”

                “Littlefinger – Petyr Baelish – died there. By my hand.”

                “By your choice?”

                “No, not by my choice. By my sister’s wish. She is the Lady of Winterfell. I am her sister. I carry out her orders, when she gives them and I think they’re for the good.”

                “You survived the road.” It’s not necessarily related to the topic, but Gendry knows how she chooses to answer will be telling in itself.

                “It was a very long road.” She gestures at the chest at the foot of her bed. “Ale. You might need it for this.” He pours them both a tankard and places one in front of her. “Sit down, Gendry, stop hulking. You make the place look cluttered.” He grins at her and sits, propping his own feet on her table. “I’ll tell you my story, Gendry, if you promise to keep your mouth shut until the end. If at the end you run screaming from the room, that’s on you.”

                “Alright.”

                “After the Brotherhood sold you to the witch, I ran away from them. The Hound was waiting for me, and took me into – well, I suppose technically he kidnapped me. We travelled together. I thought he was going to take me back to Kings Landing, but it turned out he intended to ransom me back to my family. When we arrived at the Twins, the Frey’s and the Lannister’s had murdered my mother and my brother Robb. They say they threw my mother’s body into the Trident, naked, and left her there to rot. They mocked her funeral customs. They cut off my brother’s head and sewed the head of his direwolf onto his neck. I saw his body paraded around by baying Frey men and I swore to the Gods that I would have my revenge on them.” She pauses, and drinks from her own tankard.

                “We fled the castle and came across some Lannister soldiers in the woods. They were laughing about what they’d done to my mother. One of them was describing how he sewed the direwolf head onto my brother. I walked up and stabbed the bastard with the Hound’s own knife. He died squealing like a stuck pig and I thought it might have been one of the most beautiful sounds of my life.

                “The Hound decided that he would take me to the Eyrie, to meet my Aunt Lysa. On the way, I met the man who murdered Lommy. He still had Needle in his belt, and I stabbed him through the throat and watched him drown in his own blood.” Her voice is so utterly, terrifyingly calm. Gendry thinks he’s never been more frightened, but underneath that is serious respect. She’s carved her path and her place in the world, and if it has been paved in blood, then at least it was blood that should have been taken.

                “We ran into Rorge next, and I recognised him as the man with Yoren who’d threatened me. I said he wasn’t on my list, because I didn’t know his name. So the Hound asked him what his name was, and he told me. He was my third kill, so that was two names off my list – the Lannister soldier wasn’t on it until I heard him saying what he’d done, so I don’t count him. When we reached the Eyrie, the guard there told us that Lysa Arryn was dead – just three days earlier.

                “We continued on, the Hound and I, although I think he’d run out of ideas about who he was going to ransom me to. We met Brienne and Podrick Payne – you’ve met them both – and Brienne realised who the Hound was and by default, who I was. She asked me to go with her, she said she’d take me to my sister. She and the Hound fought, and I hid from her. She won, knocked him off a cliff and thought he must be dead. So I hid, they thought I’d run away. So they left, and I went to find the Hound. He was still alive, and he begged me to kill him, to end it quickly. But I wouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t kill a man who wasn’t on my list. He tried to goad me into it, but I stole his money – what little he had – and left him there. I was – rather pleased, actually, to see that he survived regardless. Underneath all the cursing and the scars and the foul temper, he’s a good man.

                “I found a ship leaving port, and asked the Captain to take me North. I thought I might go to the Wall, go to Jon. But he said he was going to Braavos. Do you remember Jaqen H’ghar?”

                “Of course,” Gendry says, because really, how’s he going to forget that creep? Guy gave him shivers down the spine.

                “He gave me a Braavosi coin, and told me to go to him if I decided I wanted to learn. So I showed the coin to the captain of the boat, and he took me with him to Braavos. I went to the House of Black and White, but they wouldn’t let me in at first. I lived on the streets for a little while, but he came for me when I was in a fight with some boys who wanted to take Needle from me.

                “It takes a long time to learn to be no one – the Faceless Men are no one. You have to learn to serve first, before you can learn to take a life. You have to put aside who you are, who you were, and who you might have been. But I learnt, slowly. The Many Faced God took my sight, because I took a life that wasn’t mine to take. I was a blind beggar for a long time, learning to fight without sight. When I passed the tests I was given, I was given my sight back, and tasked to kill an actress. I even got as far as putting the poison into her cup, but at the last moment I declined to kill her. She was kind to me. I don’t kill people who are kind. So I failed the test, and I was marked for death myself. The Waif came to kill me. But I never got rid of Needle, you see. I retrieved it from the place I’d hidden it, and bribed a trader to take me back to Westeros. But I was caught.” Arya pulls her shirt up, and Gendry feels the colour leech from his cheeks at the sight of the scar on her stomach.

                “The Waif nearly killed me, but the actress Lady Crane saved me. She dressed my wounds and gave me milk of the poppy to help me sleep, but when I woke, she was dead. The Waif had killed her and I fled into the streets. I lured her back to where I’d hidden Needle, and I killed her. I took her face.”

                “You – you took her _face_.”

                “Oh yes, that’s the bit I didn’t mention. The House of Black and White is the home of the Faceless Men, Gendry. We can wear the faces of the dead; we can take on their identity, their voice and their appearance. Nobody can tell the difference. So I took her face and placed it in the Hall of Faces, and Jaqen found me there, and realised what it meant. He said I had become no one, but he was wrong. I am Arya Stark, after all. No amount of faces could change that. I left the House of Black and White and returned home. I went to the Twins, and killed Lothar Frey and Black Walder Rivers. They were the men who killed my mother, and my brother’s wife. I took on the identity as a serving girl, I made them into a pie, and served it to Lord Frey. While he ate, I revealed myself. I slit his throat and watched him die.

                “Did you hear that they found all the Frey sons in their Hall, dead of poisoned wine? I did that. I wore the face of Walder Frey and poisoned every one of his sons, as a reminder of how one should treat a guest. I told his wife to tell people that winter came for House Frey. I told her to tell people that the North remembers.” She falls silent then, drinking more ale. Gendry thinks he might have frozen in his chair, although whether it’s with fear or awe he doesn’t know.

                “I was going to head to Kings Landing,” she says, her voice conversational now. “I was at the Inn at the Crossroads. I saw Hot Pie – he’s doing well, Gendry. He’s alive and looks to be the only person in the Seven Kingdoms untouched by all the politics and all the wars. We should have stayed there with him. Scrubbing vomit off flagstones would have been an easy life compared to everything else. He asked me where I was going, and then asked why not Winterfell. It’s odd, how little news reaches Braavos. I thought the Boltons still held Winterfell. Hot Pie told me otherwise, that Jon had won the Battle of the Bastards and been named King in the North, with my sister at his side. I rode home on the spot. I just missed Jon – of course I did. My entire story has been a chronicle of bad timing and missed chances. I have never been so pleased to see anyone as I was to see him that day. So that’s it, I think, that’s my story. I’ve never told anyone the whole thing, not even Jon and Sansa know the details. Bran does, but I didn’t have to actually tell him. Will you be running screaming?” Gendry shakes his head before he even understands really what he’s agreeing to. Arya smiles then, a pleased, tiny smile. She’s so different, so distant – and yet he still recognises what she’s done.

 

A person’s story is their identity, the story they decide to tell gives them a life. She could have glossed over it all, told him that she’d just gone to Braavos to learn to fight, that she’d left to get better at defending herself and really, why not? She doesn’t owe him her story, she owes him nothing. If anything, he owes her for his remarks and turning his back on her offer. She’d been so young then – hell, so had he. Neither of them really understood war then, even though they’d seen horrors. But now – now she is a woman, not a child, despite the fragility of her appearance. She looks so small, but there is no vulnerability to her at all. This is a warrior, a fighter, a lady knight, a queen of swords.

                “I’m sorry I was too proud to accept your offer,” he says. She looks at him, and for a moment Gendry thinks she might be measuring his throat, ready to actually slit it this time.

                “Perhaps it’s for the best that you didn’t,” she says, quietly. “You were right. If we’d gone to my brother then, I would have been forced into being Lady Arya, and you would have just been the blacksmith. Not to mention that we’d probably both have ended up dead. But it’s still on the table. I can be your family.”

                “I don’t want you to be my family,” he answers, and her face falls before she can check it. “I don’t want to be just your family. I want you to be my wife.”

 

She launches out of her chair so quickly that the table overturns, slamming Gendry’s feet back to the ground and spilling Needle, ale, flagon and mug to the ground. Suddenly, she’s standing before him, his chin in her hand as she forces him to look at her and not at the mess winding all over her floor.

                “Your _wife?_ ” she hisses, her eyes dark and her face shadowed with something.

                “All I’ve been thinking about, all these fucking years, is how stupid I was to turn you away. All I’ve thought about is how you would have brought me to your brother and brought me into your family, even though I was some lowborn bastard boy. But I’m not a lowborn bastard, I’m a highborn bastard. I’m Robert Baratheon’s son. And now I’ve found you again after years and years of thinking you must have died somewhere on the road, I’m not making such a stupid mistake again. So, yes, I want you to be my wife.”

                “You’re Robert Baratheon’s son.”

                “That’s the thing you want to question me on.” Her grip on his chin is almost uncomfortably tight. To gain a little more power, he surges to his own feet, taking his wrist in one of his hands, feeling the tension there. He looks down at her, she looks up.

                “I just told you how I learnt to be an assassin and you propose to me.”

                “You don’t scare me, Arya. You never did. And I reckon you need someone you don’t scare around, so you don’t get too smug.”

                “And you want to be that someone.”

 

He doesn’t answer her in words, he kisses her. He pulls her up onto her toes and he kisses her hard, hard enough to bruise them both. She kisses him right back too, grabbing the front of his shirt in her fists and dragging him close and kissing right back. He picks her up, off her feet, she wraps her legs around his waist and doesn’t stop kissing for even a damn second, and all he can think is that they’re both wearing far too much.

                “Bed,” she mutters against his lips, and something _explodes_ inside him. He thinks it might have been his heart.

                “You sure?” he gasps, backing them towards it even as he asks it.

                “Sure,” she answers, going right back to kissing him. He lays her down as carefully as he can, pulling her boots off and flinging them to the side. They could land in the fire for all he cares.

 

They undress each other in a frenzy of tugged cloth and dragged leather, until she’s naked beside him and panting slightly. He rolls her onto her back, his hands finding her hips as he kisses her again, more gently this time, less urgency. His stubble has left her skin red; her nails have left scratches from where they caught when she tore his shirt over his head. He kisses a path down her neck, he looks at the pallor of her skin in the flickering light of the fire and the candles, and he watches the play of the muscle in her arms as she pulls his face back to hers. He smiles, pins her wrists to the bed as he retraces his path down her neck, further this time, onto her chest and finding his way to her breasts. They’re small but perfect, and she’s so very responsive when he takes them first with hand and then with mouth, her gasp of surprise and pleasure sweeter than any steel-song when the hammer strikes it.

 

He slides his hand up her leg, following it with his mouth. He finds that the backs of her knees are sensitive and that when he touches his mouth to the inside of her thigh, she quivers beneath him like a willow tree in a breeze. He finds her warm and wet for him and she spreads before him like the most delicious feast he’s ever had, and her hands try to find a grip in his short hair when he feasts like a man who’s been starving for years. She gives a gasp and her thighs tighten around his head and he can _feel_ her shaking. He did that. He made her cry out and quiver and shake under his touch, and when he rises up and meets her eyes he thinks he might drown in them.

                “Tell me if you want to stop,” he tells her, because he’s almost certain nobody has touched her before him, he’s almost sure she’s as untouched as fresh snow, and that almost frightens him.

                “Don’t stop,” she answers, pulling him back into a kiss. “Please don’t stop.”

 

He slides inside her and she’s hotter than fire itself around him. She buries her face into his neck for a moment, her breath hot against his shoulder, her teeth a quick, sharp pain as she bites him gently.

                “Good?” he mutters, holding still although he thinks it might kill him.

                “Good,” she answers. “Gendry, please, I –“

 

He makes love to her, slow and sweet and gentle, watching the emotions chase across her eyes as she stares at him, gritting his teeth as pleasure sweeps over him and drowns him in her love. When it’s over and they’re wrapped together in her bed, fur beneath them and over them, her breasts pressing into his side as he holds her and thinks he’s never been so damn lucky in his entire goddamn life.

                “Are you alright?” she asks him, her voice low and lazy.

                “Yes. More than. You?”

                “More than,” she parrots back, and he laughs, a low chuckle as he presses a kiss to her forehead. “So what are we?” she asks. “A King’s bastard and a lady?”

                “No. I’m a blacksmith, and you’re an assassin. We’re warriors, you and me. And whatever’s coming from beyond the wall, we’ll be standing beside each other and fighting beside each other.”

                “Then I’ll be your wife,” she says. “Because you’re my blacksmith.”

                “And you’re my assassin.”

 

There’ll be questions, of course, when the King in the North gets here, but for now it doesn’t matter - because she is his, and he is hers.

 


End file.
